Our View: Where's Dad? Poor, single moms struggle

There's no secret to breaking the cycle of poverty: Get a good education, get a job and you're on your way.

But little things come along that make getting a good education and a job complicated. Those little things are babies.

A significant number of women in Winnebago County are on their own when a child is born. About half of the county's births in 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, were to unwed mothers.

Single moms tend to be poor. Their children tend to be poor because they know no better and have no role models. Those poor children become poor adults.

So the cycle continues.

There are single moms who do well, but the odds are against them: Half of the single mothers in the city of Rockford live in poverty; it's 62.1 percent if the mother has children younger than 5.

Nationally, children growing up in families led by single mothers are four times more likely to be poor. Children who grow up poor are 1.3 times more likely to have learning disabilities or suffer developmental delays or exhibit behavioral and peer social problems.

Unwed births are a big problem in Rockford, but it's not much better elsewhere. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 46 percent of first births to mothers ages 15 to 44 occur out of wedlock, compared with 38 percent in 2002.

Exacerbating the challenges single mothers face is a lack of education and a lack of experience in the workforce. It's hard to get that education and that experience when you have no help at home. The cost of child care is prohibitive when your income comes from a minimum-wage job.

It may sound simple and perhaps a bit sexist, but having a man in the house makes a difference. Among married couples with children younger than 18, the poverty rate was 5.7 percent.

Too often the fathers of the children single mothers raise disappear after conception. Those fathers often are products of single-parent homes, cultivating a cycle of crime, poverty and despair.

The national statistics are frightening:

90 percent of all homeless and runaway children are from homes without fathers.71 percent of high school dropouts are from fatherless homes.Young children growing up without father's involvement are 10 times more likely to be extremely poor.The majority of teen mothers come from homes without fathers.85 percent of all youths in prisons grew up in a fatherless home.Society can't force men to be good fathers, but perhaps if we drive the point home often enough, some will realize how important they are to their children's futures. How about some public service announcements in print and on radio and TV, perhaps featuring a celebrity who is proud of his children?

Single mothers who raise boys need to teach them responsibility, that children are not trophies to be stacked on shelves and allowed to gather dust. They are not notches on a belt that serve as a testament to manhood.

Children are treasures that need to be nurtured, mentored and supported so they can grow into responsible adults.

Without that, the cycle will continue and we'll lose another generation to poverty.